Let's Move-affiliated website hacked

By BYRON TAU

01/19/2012 05:25 PM EST

A fitness website that administers a joint initiative between first lady Michelle Obama's Let’s Move! program and the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition has been compromised by hackers, resulting in the loss of personal information — including the nutritional habits of users.

Users who signed signed up for the Million PALA (Presidential Active Lifestyle Award) Challenge received an email Thursday informing them that all their user data had been accessed by hackers.

"Hackers recently accessed our database, which included personal information such as your username, password, security question and answer, email address, date of birth, city and state, and, if you provided it, your name. The hackers were also able to access data such as your logged activities, your nutrition goals, what groups you are in, and messages you had sent and received within the online tracker," the website presidentschallenge.org informed registered users. The website does not keep credit card and financial information.

"We are alerting you so you can change your login information on any website where you might have used the same or similar username and/or password, and so you can generally monitor your personal and financial information," they warned users.

President's Challenge is an organization run out of Indiana University in Bloomington — and the hacked website in question is not a government site. But the PALA program is a joint venture by HHS and the President’s Challenge. Thousands of government employees were encouraged to sign up for the challenge — and as a result received notices that the personal data was not safe. Michelle Obama herself appeared in September with Nickelodeon to promote the program.

Requests for comment from the White House and President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition.

This item has been updated. It originally stated that presidentschallenge.org retained financial information and that the program was 'administered' by Let's Move.